Friday, December 19, 2014

Wall mounted Pygmy Blood Troll Head.

I came up with the idea for making wall mounted beast heads years ago, of course I never got around to it and since then I've seen several others making them - that's always annoying. However, I finally got around to it, it was mostly the finer details of reproducing them consistently that stopped me from doing it right away.

The biggest stumbling block for me ended up being two relatively simple things, the plaque itself and the eyes.The biggest problem was sourcing locally and then sourcing within Canada online. Neither really panned out in a way I felt would work for me without driving the cost of the final piece up. Then I suddenly happened upon some small plaques that were very inexpensive and it went from there.

As for the eyes, I didn't want to paint them, so I wanted something I could just plop into place. I found some glass black glass beads that would give the troll that soulless look. The tricky part was designing all this to be done with just a single mould with a minimum amount of work involved to reproduce the piece.

So I took one of the stones, glued a wooden stick to it. Because that how you make eyeballs, right?

I made a mould of that and created to silicone copies.

So I could sculpt around them to create a socket and pull them out without distressing the sculpture.

It worked perfectly. It took less than a day for the sculpt. I pretty much just made it up as I was going. I knew I wanted a fat little weird troll-like head and that was it.

I was happy with the result, and that it didn't take me days of agonizing over details to get it to turn out. From there I made a stone mould, with a flat back to it, drilled a hole in that and the mould was done in less than a day as well.

I thought the best and least expensive material would be latex filled with expanding foam, I'm used to it and I had all these supplies onhand already, so that was a pretty easy choice.

And there you have it. I had minimal cleanup around the edges, no other post-mould adjusting, cleaning or detailing to do, I just had to paint it, glue in the eyes and stain the plaque and mount the sucker. It was a lot more work than I'm making it sound, but it's fairly easy work overall, just takes a couple hours to produce one of these - unless I do them in bulk.

So yes, I am selling these. At the time of posting this I've just made the first prototype one, I'll be running off a couple more and doing a run of 5 for now and seeing how well they sell. Now that I've done the whole process and know my costs, I came up with a price of $40 for each one. Anyone interested can contact me, themonkeyrodeo@gmail.com.

So, after all that, what is a Pygmy Blood Troll? Here's some information on this ugly little critter.

The origins of this vile species is rather complicated.
While most all creatures of Demonic origins are peaceful, docile beings, Pygmy
Blood Trolls are quite the opposite.

It begins with the Blood Parasite, a leech-like worm that is
responsible for most modern Vampire myths. They infect a living host, leaving
them mostly dead in all appearances, using their bodies to then feed on blood
from living victims. Normally this process simply works with the parasite
taking over the internal functions of both Demons and Humans, Humans being much
more susceptible because of their weaker physiology.

Demons are more resistant to the Blood Parasite on average,
27% of all Demonic species are completely immune to them. Trolls specifically
are immune to Blood Parasite, however one species, Earth Trolls – who can
hibernate deep in the earth for hundreds of years – actually absorb the Blood
Parasite.

In most cases the parasite is simply consumed internally
with no ill effect, however in pregnant Earth Trolls, the fetus is bonded with
the parasite, altering its entire biological structure. One Pygmy Blood Troll
(called as such since they never grow over a foot tall and most trolls range
from seven feet to several hundred feet tall) is a somewhat hazardous nuisance,
several are a much different matter. Pygmy Blood Trolls procreate much like
modern day rabbits, within months there can be as many as one thousand.

Pygmy Blood Trolls usually feed on smaller
animals, but have, on occasion, attacked larger creatures in packs. They are
incredibly dangerous in high numbers since their Trolls physiology makes them
strong for their size, and very tough to kill. The Blood Parasite physiology
makes them very fast healers and immune to pain – it’s is believe the only true
method of killing a Pygmy Blood Troll is to decapitate it and burn the body
immediately. They will also, like their parentage, burrow deep into the earth
where they can hibernate for hundreds of years and are near impossible to find
in this state – this makes controlling Pygmy Blood Troll outbreaks a very
difficult task and on that must be handled immediately before they either
procreate or enter hibernation.